Published by the Gem County Messenger

October is World Blind Awareness Month

Posted: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 11:56 am

Few blind Gem County residents, but numbers growing

Blindness awareness began with Louis Braille in 1824 when he created a six dot code to teach Braille and then again with Helen Keller in 1882 when she became deaf and blind. Over the years, her advocating brought national recognition to the hearing and visually impaired community.

There are approximately 285 million people who are visually impaired and of that, 39 million who are blind worldwide. Of that number, approximately 4 million Americans are blind and 47,000 go blind every year. That’s one person going blind every 11 minutes. In Gem County, a few people are impacted by blindness with the possibility of many more who are unknown.